Cat, Spider and a Wookie

Click images for larger view.

I housesat this weekend and took these pics. The cat is Charlie and confirmed one of my greatest dislikes about cats. They nuzzle up and purr and stroke against your leg when they feel like it then bite and scratch when they feel like doing that.

Keep on Looking

Here's a converstation I overheard in the theatre today waiting for the film "Lost in Translation" to start:
Man Behind Me: Richard!
Man in Front of Me: Hey John.
John: So what are you up to?
Richard: Waiting to see a movie.
John: Sure.
Richard: John do you know Pamela?
Woman in Front of Me: Hi.
John: Hi.
Richard: Pam works with me on the show.
John: The movie review show?
Richard: Yeah.
Pam: Yeah.
John. Cool. So I've heard great things about this movie.
Pam. Oh yeah. I hear this is quite the departure for Bill Murray.
John: Yeah, like his role is Rushmore which I loved.
Pam: Oh, I never saw that.
Richard: I liked Bill Murray in Caddyshack.
Pam: I think I remember that.
John: But I hear that Sofia Coppola really shows her stuff in this.
Pam: Who?
Richard: Francis Ford Coppola's daughter. She directed this.
Pam: Ah. I didn't know.
John: Yeah I saw her first movie, Virgin Deaths, no, The Virgin Suicides. I never got into it. But I should give it another viewing. Some friends of mine who are all about film just rave about it.
Movie starts.
After the movie:
Pam: Hmm. That was fascinating.

Fascinating is a term you use to describe a movie you don't understand, not one that you like. I didn't find "Lost in Translation" fascinating. I also didn't like it.
It is a lot like Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" which I also didn't like. Caught up in images and scenes that don't mean much in themselves and even less in relation to the rest of the movie, the movie relies on the audience to make sense out of pretensious mess. A painting of a big red dot might be fascinating to some hipster art house crowd who bring meaning to the work but it's hard to find it in the work itself.
The two main characters are Bill Murray's Bob Harris, an aging Hollywood star in Tokyo to shoot a whiskey commercial, and Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte, a young married recent college graduate trying to figure out her life's path. There are other character's in the movie but they are so one dimensional and cartoonish that the leads seem dynamic in comparison. The best thing about this movie is the performances of Murray and Johansson which I did enjoy. Still it wasn't enough for me to like the movie. That would be like recommending a restaurant where the food was terrible but the wait staff does an excellent job. Bill Murray is funny in this movie because Bill Murray is funny not because of any credit I can give to the script or direction.
If the people who are "all about film" come to me with praise for this movie I will value my own opinion and look for something else.
Lost in Translation (").

Zebra Bone

I registered a domain name for my web design business today. My company for web design is called Zebra Bone Studios (a division of KMS World Enterprises Inc.) and the site will be found at www.zebrabone.com in a couple of weeks.
Why Zebra Bone? you ask. The name just came to me one day along with an image of a zebra chewing on a big lion bone. I'm working on the logo design and will have it done once I master Adobe Illustrator which I'm pretty new at.
I was going to take a class on Illustrator but that is a story for another day.
Keep an eye out for news about Zebra Bones studios here.

Shoe Shine Sunday

Hold Your Tongue

Permanent Record

Pretty Dirty Things

Tonight I saw the best movie I've seen in a long while, Dirty Pretty Things. I won't go into it much what the film is about since I went into it pretty blind and enjoyed just letting it take me where it was going, In short though it deals with a nation of immigrants in London and an honerable man trying to do what id right. It reminded me a lot of Camus's The Plague except for the fact that this film made me think more and I liked it better than that book. The main performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor is brilliant.
Please check it out.